Ciconia ciconia -Tsavo East National Park, Kenya-8

Urohidrosis (sometimes misspelled "urohydrosis") is the habit in some birds of

defecating Defecation (or defaecation) follows digestion, and is a necessary process by which organisms eliminate a solid, semisolid, or liquid waste material known as feces from the digestive tract via the anus. The act has a variety of names ranging f ...

onto the scaly portions of the legs as a cooling mechanism, using

evaporative cooling An evaporative cooler (also known as evaporative air conditioner, swamp cooler, swamp box, desert cooler and wet air cooler) is a device that cools air through the evaporation of water. Evaporative cooling differs from other air conditioning s ...

of the fluids. Several species of storks and

New World vulture The New World vulture or condor family, Cathartidae, contains seven extant species in five genera. It includes five extant vultures and two extant condors found in warm and temperate areas of the Americas. The "New World" vultures were widesprea ...

s exhibit this behaviour. Birds' droppings consist of both feces and urine, which are excreted together through the cloaca. The term is also used to describe the analogous behaviour in seals that cool themselves while basking by urinating on their hind flippers. "Hidrosis" is the medical term for

sweat Perspiration, also known as sweating, is the production of fluids secreted by the sweat glands in the skin of mammals. Two types of sweat glands can be found in humans: eccrine glands and apocrine glands. The eccrine sweat glands are distrib ...

ing from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

, and the word "urohidrosis" was coined by M. P. Kahl in 1963:

...Because of its apparent functional similarity to true sweating, I suggest the term ''urohidrosis'' (Greek: ''ouron'' = urine; ''hidrōs'' = sweat) for this phenomenon.

This behaviour leads to accumulation of droppings around leg

rings Ring may refer to: * Ring (jewellery), a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry * To make a sound with a bell, and the sound made by a bell :(hence) to initiate a telephone connection Arts, entertainment and media Film and ...

on ringed birds, which can lead to injury.

References

Bird behavior {{ornithology-stub